Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/243

 a perforated bamboo box. Poor An had given me something just like that in a playful mood, and I had kept it in my pocket for her sake, being, as you will have doubtless observed, a sentimental young man, and now I clapped my hand where it should have been, but it was gone.

"Yes," said my new friend, "that is yours. I smelt the sweetmeat coming up the hill, and crossed the grass until I found you here asleep. Oh, it was lovely! I took it from your pocket, and white Seth rose up before my swimming eyes, even at the scent of it. I am Si, well named, for that in our land means sadness, Si, the daughter of Prince Hath's chief sweetmeat-maker, so I should know something of such stuff. May I, please, nibble a little piece?"

"Eat it all, my lass, and welcome. How came you here?—But I can guess: do not answer if you would rather not."

"Ay, but I will. It is not every day I can speak to ears so friendly as yours. I am a slave, chosen for my luckless beauty as last year's tribute to Ar-hap."

"And now?"

"And now the slave of Ar-hap's horse-keeper, set aside to make room for a fresher face."

"And do you know whose face that is?"

"Not I, a hapless maid sent into this land of horrors, to bear ignominy and stripes, to eat coarse food and do coarse work, the miserable